


Hell Above

by drunkicarus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Bears the Mark of Cain, Demon Dean Winchester, I Don't Even Know, Knight of Hell Dean Winchester, Post-Canon, Really I don't know how to tag this, What-If, alternative season 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 02:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21384418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkicarus/pseuds/drunkicarus
Summary: Or maybe it’s just two impossible blue eyes chasing him around the world on broken wings, a tan trench coat flipping in the wind the last thing he sees when he escapes with a grin on his lips, the waves of angelic fingers tangling in wings and spiked tails, trying to catch the smoke of his true being.A What If placed somewhere in season 15 and beyond.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	Hell Above

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all!  
So I started working on this something like three weeks ago? I don't know it was after 15x02 and I needed to let this out after I saw the Mark of Cain in on of the last promos before the premiere. I loved the MOC, i will always love the MOC and i will never be able to stop screaming at the top of my lungs how the writers screwed up the storyline.  
So here i am with this thing I don't even know how to properly tag. Only thing i know that All Our Own by Radio Company helped me so much in the last fragment so go listen to that awesome album.  
English is not my first language so any comment is apprecciated!
> 
> Title from Hell Above by Pierce The Veil

I.

The Mark comes back with a choir of promises and shudders of terror.

Too familiar voices sing and scream in his head, fire run in his veins like the best drug in the universe, demanding blood and death.

He knows he can’t resist it, he can feel himself slipping further and further away, drowning him in blackness and violence.

It feels like drowning is the constant of his life, of his entire existence. Be it by guilt of failing his mission, shame in his days in Hell, crippling grief in losing everyone he ever cared about, grueling pain, bloodthirsty darkness or the celestial power of a belligerent archangel, drowning is what Dean Winchester will never be able to escape.

But the Mark, once again, is a mean to an end and this time, he won’t fail because this is his choice.

This is not what Chuck designed for him, this is not what anybody wanted for him and neither, by a long shot, what he himself wanted, not after the length they went to remove the scar from his arm years ago.

But this is him, making a choice, escaping the maze and finally, living his life as he wants.

II.

When death reclaims his body and the rasping of his dying lungs, the Mark finally reclaims his soul, twisting and blackening it until everything that remains is a broken ruin, a hardened and impenetrable shell of what was once a champion of humanity.

The touch of true Darkness is the delicate caress of a long lost lover, rewarding him for coming back with true and raw power.

In that moment the purest and brightest soul of Creation becomes the darkest smoke, a black hole fated to draw the worlds in red.

It’s the absence of the Blade that gives him enough awareness and humanity to flee and for that fleeting instant North America is obscured by the colossal wings of a being not design to live in the earthly plane, a being of such power and chaos to make the Planes shivers in his departure.

For days Heaven will try to understand what happened, what shattered the mild peace they were in and face the knowledge of their death. Nobody will be able to understand, not then, not until the voice of a fallen brother will tell them the truth. Only then the Silver City will fall in silence, afraid of when the end will come.

Hell becomes his home, torture his best friend. It’s in those decades that all that made Dean Winchester the man he was just vanish in the sobbing and screaming of mutilated souls, delight filling his essence at the lullaby of pain.

Reclaiming his rightful place as Alastair’s pupil it’s easy, forcing every single demon to kneel in his presence a sick joke made all so beautiful by the uttering of his name, whispered like a prayer full of fear.

His smoke, his very essence, reach every crevice of the Pit, clenching in his hold everything from his growing empire to his army of faithful little demons. He amuses himself in the absence of reality in his playroom, filled with moans and blood, sex and death, pleasure and pain. It’s the core of the damned plane, it’s where the King receives his subjects and declares his unforgiving law.

The Blade is always in his mind but never to search her. He has power, he has control, he can sate the hunger however he wants and whenever he desires. After centuries, he doesn’t know if he’s doing that to protect his family or himself from a cure he doesn't want. He quickly decides he doesn’t care.

III.

When he resurfaces on the confines of the world, it’s almost painful. Being trapped in a body, even if his, after spending so much time as a planar creature of chaos incarnated feels wrong. But he marches on, and observes as the life of his little brother, now so old and fragile, draws to an end. He observes his soul, so fractured and still so bright, leave his body and flow in a plane he will never be able to visit. Only then he opens the gates of Hell once again, when he’s sure he will never see him again. His domain it’s not Sammy’s place, it never was and never will be.

Vaguely he can feel grief. When it changes in a crippling ache he grows confused, curiosity spreading like cobwebs in his being. How can a monster like him feel such a thing? He doesn’t understand and, after a while, he doesn't even care to elaborate the feeling.

With a last glance to azure eyes filled with surprise and longing, he wills himself away. He almost wants to laugh, a mirthless sound full of dry sarcasm, but nothing comes out of his sealed lips. In the end he even defied the prophecy of Cain, the prophecy of his bloodline. He didn’t kill Crowley, the possibility wrenched from his hands, he didn’t kill his brother, who he knows lived a long and fulfilling life even if devoid of his true soulmate. He didn’t kill Cas, the mere thought of it causing bile to rise in his mouth. He’s a demon, he’s a Knight of Hell, but he’s his own being. When he took the Mark again he promised himself to never follow what was written in the book of his life. He did that. He showed the finger in the face of destiny and at the carcass of God himself.

Earth can’t escape the bloodbath, though.

Humanity learn the meaning of true terror, of living with a shadow hovering on them all, ready to kill for an insatiable hunger demanding body after body, demanding the pleasure of taking a life and having his hands bloody.

A new apocalypse come and goes, hunters dying in the futile attempt to imitate the legends of brothers long dead. He takes particular pleasure in tormenting those souls, in telling them how their beloved heroes died. The look of utter rejection when the knowledge hit them is the sweetest delight, frozen in their void dead eyes.

But he’s not a creature of this plane and after a few decades life starts to get annoying and a little too tight to his liking, asking him to go back, to sit on his throne and watch everything crumbling into black smoke and ash.

For a reason he doesn’t understand he remains.

Maybe it’s a car, still pristine after so many years, that keeps him there.

Or maybe it’s just two impossible blue eyes chasing him around the world on broken wings, a tan trench coat flipping in the wind the last thing he sees when he escapes with a grin on his lips, the waves of angelic fingers tangling in wings and spiked tails, trying to catch the smoke of his true being.

IV.

Fire paints the city in red and gold, casting the world in fiery colors of passion and death. It’s a beautiful yet intimidating impressionistic paint mottled with the gray of ashes and the black or burned corpses and houses. The sun is going down behind white smoke and the only sounds are the flickering or flames and the moans of dying little humans.

In the middle of the road, Dean Winchester stops. For the first time, he stops. He frowns at the couple in front of him and calls back his darkness, folding it around himself like the halo of wings.

In front of him a young kid tremble, holding in his arms a child, a baby, protecting him with his body, ready to die just to save his little crying brother. It’s useless, it’s pathetic, it strikes home, deep inside him.

He remembers, in another life, doing the same thing countless of times. And then it hits him.

A light comes to life in his mind, if not in his soul, and he remembers. He turns around, looking behind him, looking at the burning city, and he is alone.

Utterly, undeniably alone. And he did that. No one is there to restrain him, to try to make him see reason with a familiar stubbornness.

It doesn’t hurt like it should, he’s far too gone to feel anything remotely human, but for the first time his humanity shines and ask him to stop, to take a moment and stay still.

And he does. He stops and sits where he is, the evil of his being reined behind the cage of his vessel.

He can understand Cain now, how he stopped, why he did that, the pain in doing so, the knowledge to never really be capable of doing that, not for long, not with power and promises singing in his head.

But for now, he is Dean Winchester and not a Knight, not the King of rotten souls. He is the shell of the righteous man, an abomination, but he is himself.

And so he waits. The kid is long gone, the cry of the infant a memory all too vivid. He waits and waits for the shadows of broken wings to reach him like they always did in all this centuries.

He doesn’t know how much he stays there but he’s sure it’s not long, he can’t feel the Mark burning and demanding, the last atrocity still fresh on his hands. Then, like a gentle breeze, scorched feathers brush against his, sending the pleasure of a long lost contact down his whole being.

He stirs, takes a meaningless deep breath, and turns around.

Ancient blue looks at him without fears, a hint of curiosity and surprise hidden behind a stoic wall of nothingness. It’s the least he deserves and yet, without any of inhibitions of a life long passed, he wishes for more. He wishes for what he denied his human self, of what he ran away from when he emerged from Hell.

« Cas… » it’s a murmur, low and grating on his throat, sore from disuse. It’s the closest thing to a prayer a being like him can utter without pain coursing through him. He doesn’t even know what he’s going to say, but he doesn’t need to.

Tentatively a tendril of his true form surges, wrapping around both their vessels like a curtain of melted darkness, and he sees comprehension in the other being.

It’s not forgiveness, he doesn’t deserve that, doesn’t want to be sorry for who he become, but it’s a little step towards something new.

« Hello Dean » comes unbidden, the smallest smile forming on those lips, a new radiance blazing inside the grace of his angel.

They are not creatures of this plane, too solid, too realistic, their home are the irrational, eternal planes of creation and entropy. Their vessels remain, eyes never wavering from each other, a long gaze they always shared and that went missing too long ago while their true forms comes together, an explosion of stars and black holes mingling together to form a new galaxy.


End file.
